


Growing Pains

by blueberrynewt



Series: Heart Ceremonies [3]
Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, domestic angst?, feat. an appearance by your favorite scottish engineer, if that's a thing, this is just about being in love and learning how to make a relationship work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-30
Updated: 2020-01-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:35:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22474210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueberrynewt/pseuds/blueberrynewt
Summary: It's been a few months since Jim moved in with Leonard, and they're both happier than ever. Except when they're not.(Sequel to Where Best Friends Are Made)
Relationships: James T. Kirk/Leonard "Bones" McCoy
Series: Heart Ceremonies [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1458106
Comments: 12
Kudos: 67





	Growing Pains

**Author's Note:**

> hello hello!
> 
> so i have a gajillion (10^jillion in scientific notation) WIPs that i really care about and want to work on, as well as multiple ideas for fics that i desperately want to write but can't let myself start yet. i also have a super busy semester and not enough time to write all these things! so it'll be slow going for a while, but this little sequel was actually already written and just waiting for me to post, so y'all can have it now. i hope you enjoy these boys getting to know each other a little better.

“Doctor McCoy, believe me, I understand your concerns, but I can't —”

“Do you? For God’s sake, man, are you even _listening_ to me? I'm telling you I have patients who are _dying_ because they can't afford treatment, and the most you can say is you _understand my fucking concerns?_ ”

“I don't know what you want from me, Leonard.”

“How about some action? How about actually trying to _do something_ about it?”

“I wish I could, but you know my —”

“Your hands are tied, yeah, I know. I've heard it.” Leonard sighs and rubs his forehead. “Funny, I never pegged you as a coward, Trent. Call me if you ever grow a backbone.”

Occasionally, Leonard misses landlines. There’s something very therapeutic about slamming down an old-fashioned phone on the receiver, and tapping the End Call button on a smartphone just doesn't do the trick, no matter how aggressively he stabs at it.

Well. That's that. With another frustrated sigh, Leonard gathers up his things and heads out, doing his best to ignore the headache that's steadily growing somewhere behind his eyes.

What a day. What a fucking _mess_ of a day. Sick nurses, belligerent patients, a series of minor but infuriating mistakes on his own part, then that wreck of a phone call — God. He can't wait to get home and lie down, maybe have a glass of that new brandy to take the edge off. Maybe Jim will cook for them and bring him dinner in bed.

Leonard survives the bus ride by relishing that scenario, letting it play out to its logical conclusion. There’s dessert, sugary-sweet kisses, a gradual removal of clothes. Sex is good for headaches, anyway.

It's an enormous relief to get off the bus and walk the final block and a half to his house, to climb the steps and dig out his keys and open the door and —

_— KICK YOU OUTTA MY HOME IF YOU DON’T CUT THAT HAIR_

_YOUR MOM BUSTED IN AND SAID —_

_“_ WHAT THE FUCK?” Leonard bellows over the music, clapping his hands to his ears as his headache flares up stronger than ever.

He kicks off his shoes and stumbles into the living room, where Jim is lying on the couch, eyes closed, drumming the air with both hands. Leonard rolls his eyes toward heaven and taps Jim on the forehead. Jim opens his eyes, blinks, and grins up at him. Leonard cups his hands around his mouth to yell, “WOULD YOU TURN THAT SHIT DOWN, FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT'S HOLY?”

Jim's smile vanishes and he sits up with a huff that Leonard can see but not hear, reaching over to Leonard’s laptop and hitting the volume down key a few times. When it's just quiet enough that Leonard can hear himself think, Jim looks up again with raised eyebrows, an unpleasant twist to his lips. “Better?”

“Marginally.” Leonard presses his fingers to his temples and gives Jim a glare. “What's the attitude for?”

Jim makes an incredulous noise. “ _What's the attitude for?_ Really? What are you, my dad?”

“Sometimes I feel like I might as well be,” Leonard grouses. “For Christ’s sake, _all_ I wanted to do was get home and finally be able to relax in the peace and quiet of _my own goddamn house_. Was that _so_ much to ask.”

“ _Your_ house?” Jim gets to his feet. The music is still playing. “Last I checked, I live here, too, or did I _dream_ you asking me to move in with you? Am I not allowed to listen to music in _my_ house?”

Leonard can't hold back a derisive scoff. “Oh, sure, maybe when you can afford to pay your share of the fucking rent —”

“Are you serious?” Jim shakes his head, mouth open, as if searching for words. “Are you seriously going to pull _that_ bullshit on me now? I'm sorry, I thought this was a relationship of _equals_. But I guess that's always been just a convenient lie, right?”

Leonard presses his forehead into his hand and groans. This is decidedly not going the way he'd envisioned. “Don't be ridiculous —”

Jim lets out a high-pitched laugh. “Ridiculous. Right. That's all I am to you, huh? Just a _ridiculous_ kid who can't even pay full rent.” He crosses to the door, footsteps heavy, and shoves his feet into a pair of shoes while he yanks on his leather jacket. “You know what? Maybe you should be with one of your colleagues from the hospital. You know, rather than dating so far below you it's more like charity.” He opens the door and casts a last, withering look back at Leonard. “Just _fuck off,_ McCoy.”

He slams the door. Leonard’s ears ring. He leans over to yank the audio cable out of the laptop, so the speakers finally go quiet. Then he kicks the leg of the couch, hard, and swears loudly at the pain. That feels sort of good, so he keeps it up, yelling increasingly creative strings of profanity into the empty house. When he runs out of curses, he yanks on his own shoes and heads for a nearby bar.

It's a bar he used to frequent, pre-Jim, when he was still deep in the depression that hounded him from Georgia to California, born of his father's death and the divorce and the guilt of leaving Jo behind. He hasn't been here as often in recent months, not since —

He stops in the doorway, realizing too late. Almost a year ago, he sat in the corner of this bar and talked to Jim properly for the first time.

 _Fuck._ Why did he come here today? He should leave, go somewhere that's not full of Jim. Then again, the two of them have sampled every decent bar in the area together, plus some that were rather less than decent. And someone is yelling at him to close the door against the cool, breezy evening, so Leonard steps inside automatically and lets the door swing shut behind him.

Well, once he's inside he's not about to just turn around and march right back out. So he orders a drink and sits at the bar and tries to keep his eyes from drifting to the table in the corner. He fails. He can still see Jim, the way he looked that night, sliding into the seat across from him with that infuriating cocky grin of his, calling him “Doctor Bones” and asking after Jo.

“Fuck,” says Leonard aloud, and orders another whiskey.

“Beg pardon?” asks a voice to his right — Scottish, if he's not mistaken — and Leonard swivels to see an unfamiliar man watching him, eyebrows raised.

Leonard glares at him. “You talkin’ to me?”

“Aye. Looks like.”

“Well, don't.” He turns back to his drink. “I'm not in the mood for chitchat.”

“Sure, sure.” The man pauses. “But it seems to me that if you really wanted to be left alone, you'd be better off drinkin’ out of a bottle at home.”

Leonard doesn't dignify that with a response. 

“I mean, I don't know _you_ , but I know that when _I_ go to a crowded bar to drink overpriced whiskey and yell obscenities into my glass, it's not so I can suffer in silent solitude.”

Leonard takes a drink. “Psychologist, are you?”

“Engineer.” He takes a swig of whatever he's drinking. “I just happen to be well-versed in various flavors of ‘drunk and miserable.’”

Leonard grunts.

“So, what is it? You piss off your wife or somethin’?”

“Boyfriend.”

“Boyfriend, sorry. Didn’t mean to assume.” The stranger eyes Leonard’s glass, now empty. “Let me buy you a drink and you can tell me about it.”

Leonard shoots him a look. “Careful. Last time I got drunk in this place and poured out my troubles to a stranger, I ended up datin’ him.”

The stranger laughs. “Little danger o’ that tonight, I think. What're you drinkin’, then?” He sniffs at Leonard’s glass and makes a face. “Vile. You're switching to scotch, effective immediately.” He orders two drinks and passes one to Leonard, saying as he does, “My name’s Scotty, by the way. Well, Montgomery Scott if you want to get formal about it, but only my mother uses my real name.”

Leonard gives a reluctant little smile at that as he takes his glass. “Leonard McCoy.”

“Charmed.” Scotty tastes his drink and hums appreciatively. “So, Leonard McCoy, what did you do to the poor bastard who wound up datin’ you?”

***

An hour and a half later, Leonard is considerably less drunk than he would usually be after that much time. Scotty is a pretty good listener, and jokes around just enough to keep the conversation easy without getting annoying. Leonard ends up telling him more than he means to, and isn't sure whether it's because of the alcohol, Scotty’s untapped potential as a therapist, or some combination thereof. Regardless, it's kind of nice.

When the whole story is out, Scotty nods too many times (he's several drinks ahead by now, his accent nearly unintelligible) and taps his glass thoughtfully on the counter. “I reckon,” he says, pursing his lips, “I reckon it's prob’ly no’ as bad as you think.”

“What makes you say that?”

Scotty shrugs expansively. “Look, you've no reason to listen to me. Heaven knows I don't know much about relationships. But I reckon a fight like that, it's prob’ly par for the course, y’know? Happens all the time. You’re just, y’know. Blowin’ it out o’ proportion.”

Leonard scowls at his drink.

“I mean,” Scotty continues, “‘t's understandable. You've been through a bad divorce, right? So maybe it's only natural you get scared when somethin’ like this happens. But you canna go through life expectin’ to never get on each other's nerves. Y’ken?”

“Lemme get this straight. You think Jim's not actually that mad at me, and I'm just... _catastrophizin’_ , cause it reminds me of Jocelyn?”

Scotty just blinks at him.

“Huh.” Leonard drains his glass. “I wanna be mad at you for thinkin’ you know so much about me, but I guess you might be right.”

Scotty grins widely. “Good.”

“So what do I do?”

“Ach, what do I know? I've never met the guy. Buy ‘im flowers or somethin’.” He hiccups.

“Yeah, okay.” Leonard gets to his feet and surveys Scotty, who's swaying gently on his stool. “I'm also gonna call you a cab. You sober enough to remember your address?”

***

When Leonard gets home, the house is dark and quiet. For a minute he panics, thinking maybe Jim hasn't come back after all, maybe he really _is_ as mad as Leonard was afraid he would be. But then he flips on a light and sees the shoes kicked off just inside the door, the leather jacket on its hook. So he takes off his own shoes and goes to the bedroom door. It's ajar, the room beyond dark even though it's well before bedtime. He pushes it open with a soft creak. “Jim?”

“Yeah, I'm here.” Jim's voice sounds defeated. “Just had to get some things.”

“You — what?” Leonard’s heart plummets. “You goin’ somewhere?”

Jim pauses. His eyes adjusting to the gloom, Leonard can see him straightening up on the far side of the bed. “Yeah, I thought I'd. You know.”

“I mean,” Leonard says, the words coming out a little to the left of where he was aiming. “If you want, I'm. I'm not — you don't have to.”

Jim looks at the floor. “It's okay,” he says quietly.

“No, its —” Leonard puts a hand to his mouth as if that will help him shape the words. “Fuck, Jim, I'm sorry.”

“What?” Jim looks up. “You're — I thought — aren't you mad at me?”

“Jim. No. God, no, I'm not mad at you. Why would I be mad at you?”

Jim is quiet.

Leonard runs a hand through his hair. “Yeah, I know. I'm sorry. Look, I — I had a rough day, and I took it out on you, and that was shitty of me. I'm sorry.”

“It's true, though. What you said.”

“What, that you don't pay equal rent?” He sighs. “Well, yeah, technically, but you know that doesn't matter, right? Not really. I was just — throwin’ my weight around ‘cause I was in a lousy mood.”

“You mean to tell me you _don't_ resent that I can't afford it?” Jim sounds skeptical.

“Of course I don't. Never, Jim.” When Jim still looks doubtful, Leonard sighs again. “Okay, maybe the thought crosses my mind _very_ occasionally, when I'm feelin’ particularly out of sorts. But it's not real, you know? It's just one of those ugly thoughts that come out of a part of my mind I do my best to ignore. Shitty reflex thoughts, nothin’ that actually matters to _me_. If that makes any sense.”

Jim doesn't answer for a few seconds, then he nods and says, “Yeah. I get it. I've got a few of those myself.”

Leonard isn't sure why, but he can't help asking, “Like what?”

Jim gives a short laugh and rubs his neck. “Okay, I guess that's fair. Let's see.” He counts on his fingers. “There’s, um, well — as we've seen, there's _I do what I want, fuck you for wanting me to care about your needs, too_. And there's _would you lighten up for once and have some fun?_ And sometimes _stop trying to take care of me, I'm not your patient or your kid._ And of course the old standard, _you clearly don't love me as much as I love you._ ” He shrugs. “There's more, but those are some of the main themes.”

Leonard puts his hands in his pockets and looks at Jim's knees. “Wow. Okay.”

“Shit, I'm — I'm sorry if that was too much, you know I don't mean —”

“I know.” Leonard holds up a hand. “I know. You're good, don't worry. I'm just...processing. I'm, uh.” He rubs his face. “I'm really sorry for makin’ you feel any of that, even if it's just for a second. ‘Specially the last one. I wish I could make you never doubt how much I care about you, Jim.”

He can just make out Jim's watery smile. “I'm afraid that's a losing battle. My therapist says so.”

“I'll fight it anyway.” Leonard hesitates, then tips his head toward the kitchen. “I dunno if you ate. I picked up some Thai.”

“Sounds perfect.” Jim sets down something he's holding and crosses the room, pausing a pace away. “So. We're good?”

Leonard reaches for his hand and Jim takes it. They meet in the middle. “We're good,” Leonard confirms, and kisses him. “I love you, Jim.”

“I love you too.” Their foreheads press together.

“Still got one hell of a headache, though.”

Jim laughs and goes on tiptoe to kiss his temple. “Sorry about that. Let's go eat.”

***

The next day, Leonard buys Jim a very nice pair of headphones.


End file.
